Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (41 page)

POISON

Few executions by this means have been recorded, possibly because of the relative difficulty of administering the poison, but also because of the indeterminate time taken to die, this making it unsuitable as a public spectacle.

In Ancient Greece, at the time when Aristotle placed the executioner on a par with the judges themselves, the executioner took only a very minor part in ensuring that the death sentence was carried out, his only role being that of preparing the hemlock and presenting it to the condemned man, who then drank it: a form of liquid hara-kiri, as it were.

PRESSED TO DEATH

‘[A] sharp stone, as much as a man’s fist, [was] put under her back, and upon her was laid to the quantity of seven or eight hundredweights [about nine hundred pounds] which, breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin.’

In all walks of life there are rules, some written, others implicit agreements, for people to act in accordance with social niceties or customs. In courts of law everyone, from the judge downwards, has his or her own code of behaviour. His Honour knows he can speak without interruption; the lawyers have their set pattern of questioning witnesses, and even the accused person instinctively falls in with the proceedings being played out around him, standing when told, stating his name and other details, and, on being asked how he pleads, obediently informing the court whether he is guilty or not guilty. And then, all players fully acquainted with their roles, the trial commences in earnest. But what happens when the accused refuses to plead? Both the prosecuting and defending counsels would be thrown into confusion, not knowing on what basis they were to argue, were it not that nowadays the accused would automatically be assumed not guilty for the purposes of their trial.

But it was not always thus. If a prisoner refused to play their part in the recognised and accepted procedure, the trial could not proceed until they did. Their refusal to accept their rightful place in the drama and to abide by the imaginary script as they ought to, invariably brought proceedings to a standstill, the judge threatening that dire measures would be taken if they didn’t play fair. After this warning, the
trina admonitio
, and a respite of a few hours to let the warning sink in, the prisoner was subject to the barbarous sentence of
peine forte et dure
, severe and hard punishment, namely ‘to be remanded to prison and put into a low dark chamber, and there laid on his back on the bare floor naked, unless where decency forbade; that there should be placed (on a board, laid) on his body as great a weight of iron as he could bear, and more; that he should have no sustenance, save only on the first day three morsels of the worst bread, and on the second day three draughts of water that should be nearest to the prison door; and that, in this situation, such should be alternately his daily ration, till he died or, as anciently the judgment ran, till he answered.’

This was the penalty inflicted on Walter Calverley on 5 August 1604 who, when on trial for murdering two of his children and attempting to stab his wife to death, stood mute and so refused to plead. Accordingly, he was taken to the Press Yard in York Castle and there pressed to death.

The
Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence
dated 16 April 1651 records that: ‘This Session at the Old Bailey were four men pressed to death that were all in one robbery and, out of obstinacy and contempt of the court, stood mute and refused to plead.’

In the year 1659 Major Strangeways was tried for the murder of John Fussel and, refusing to plead, died in the same hideous way. By the account of this execution, he died in about eight minutes, many spectators in the Press Yard heaping stones on him at his own request, the law being interpreted by some that by dying in that manner, i.e. before being tried and found guilty, his family would inherit his worldly possessions, whereas once condemned to death all his property would be forfeit to the State.

From the description of the press itself, it is apparent that it was more than just a board placed on top of him, but rather ‘it appears that it was brought to nearly a point where it touched his breast. It is stated likewise to have been usual to put a sharp piece of wood under the criminal, which might meet the point in the upper Press, under the crushing pressure of the stones.’

The chronicler Holinshed elaborated the procedure further, describing that a sharp stone, rather than wood, was often placed under the prisoner’s spine, and that his limbs were extended wide and tied to stakes in the cell floor.

Nor were women exempt from such ‘persuasion’. In 1586 Margaret Clitheroe was indicted at York for harbouring a priest, and was pressed to death, ‘a sharp stone, as much as a man’s fist, put under her back, and upon her was laid to the quantity of 7 or 8 hundredweights [about 900 pounds] which, breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin’.

Some, highwaymen and the like, endured pressures of 300-500 pounds before surrendering, others being crushed beneath overwhelming amounts of stone or iron, many surviving a surprising length of time.

In 1672 Henry Jones was sentenced to be pressed to death in Monmouth and was taken back to prison on a Saturday. There, he endured the increasing amounts of weights being put on him, not breathing his last until midday on the following Monday.

This barbaric method continued in use, John Barnworth, alias Fraser, being pressed to death at Kingston, Surrey, in 1725, while in September 1741 Henry Cook, shoemaker of Stratford, met a similar fate for robbing a Mr Zachary on the highway.

A predicament arose in cases where those who were genuinely deaf and dumb were accused of committing serious crimes. At Nottingham assizes in 1735, an alleged murderer, deaf and dumb from birth, failed to plead. Evidently the testimony of witnesses was not accepted, the judge suspecting a conspiracy among neighbours to deceive the court, and so the unfortunate man was pressed to death.

The practice was not removed from the Statute Books until 1827 when, as stated earlier, it was enacted that if a prisoner refused to plead, the court would order a plea of not guilty to be entered.

Such a method was rarely employed in America, the only case reported being that of Giles Cory in 1692 who, during witchcraft trials at that time, was sentenced ‘to be pressed to death in the manner prescribed in the mother country, England’.

In Roman times other types of devices were used, Christian martyrs being squeezed in large presses in the same way as grapes and olives were pressed when extracting wine and oil. The
Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs
records the death of St Jonas:

‘The Persian Magi ordered the Press to be brought, and St Jonas to be put therein, and violently pressed and all cut to pieces. The Attendants did as they were commanded, and squeezed him sorely in the Press, and brake all his bones, which finally cut him in twain through the middle.’

RACK

‘[W]hile the victim was being stretched, cords which had been wound three times around each of his arms and legs were tightened by means of a stick, tourniquet-fashion, cutting the flesh to the bone.’

Although this device was primarily intended as a means of extracting information from unwilling victims, it was also used as a means of execution. The Baron of Scanaw, in Bohemia, was sentenced to be racked for the crime of heresy in the sixteenth century. Knowing that he would be interrogated in order to make him divulge the names of other members of his faith, he cut out his own tongue, and wrote a message saying: ‘I did this extraordinary act because I would not, under any torture, be forced to accuse myself or others, as I might, through the excruciating torment of the rack, be impelled to utter falsehoods.’ Thus thwarted, the executioner carried out the sentence of the court, and racked him to death.

Even in the countries in which death by the rack was not a specified method of capital punishment, it was accepted by the authorities that, either by over-enthusiasm or miscalculation on the part of the rackmaster and his team, or by the sheer stubbornness of the victim, death could easily occur, and so, in effect, this constituted an execution.

As with most other forms of torture and execution, the Romans got there first. The
equuleus
, the rack, was a major item in their arsenal of persuasive instruments, even being used on women. One in particular who suffered and would have died thereon, if Alexander, Governor of Tarsus, had not had further tortures in mind, was Julietta. While being stretched on the rack, her young son Cyricus cried so much that Alexander took the child on his knee, and as he did he heard Cyricus repeat a saying he had heard from his mother: ‘I am a Christian.’

On hearing this, the governor threw the child on the ground, killing him instantly, and ordered that Julietta, still on the rack, should have boiling pitch poured over her feet, and her sides torn with hooks. And on 16 April
ad
305, she was beheaded.

Down the centuries there have been many types of rack. Julietta’s model would appear to have consisted of two axles some distance apart, between which the victim was laid, the ankles being tied to one axle, the wrists to the other.

Rotating the axles in opposite directions was achieved by the executioner’s assistants inserting poles in sockets in the axles and levering them, the action thereby tightening the ropes and stretching the victim’s body, dislocating by degrees the hips and knees, the shoulder-blades and elbows, causing excruciating agony.

The Christian martyrs were always prime targets. The ancient records abound with such statements as ‘Stretched at the pulleys [the rack], he was beaten with cudgels, rods and double thongs’; ‘He is stretched on the ground at the pulleys, and finally beaten with triple thongs’; ‘The King was furiously angry and ordered them to be stretched at the pulleys, and violently beaten.’

That particular type of rack differed somewhat from the one on which Julietta suffered, in that it consisted of a heavy stake driven deep into the ground, to which the victim’s wrists were secured.

His ankles were then tied with a cord, the end of which was passed round the vertical shaft of a capstan, this latter, when rotated, stretching the martyr’s limbs and body in the approved manner. As if that were not enough, not only was the victim beaten with cudgels but, as mentioned above, boiling oil or other liquids such as red-hot sulphur or resin was administered. As quoted in the
Acts of the Martyrs
:

‘Then the Prefect, raging with despotic fury, ordered the holy Quintinus to be so cruelly racked at the pulleys that his limbs were forced apart at the joints from sheer violence. Moreover, he commanded him to be beaten with small cords, and boiling oil and pitch and melted fat to be poured over him, that no kind of punishment or torment might fail to add to his bodily anguish.’

The English version of the rack was based on the same general principles. It was introduced into this country in 1420 by John Holland, Duke of Exeter, who probably learned of the device during his campaigns against the French. Becoming Constable of the Tower of London, he brought one on to the inventory, local wits immediately christening the machine ‘the Duke of Exeter’s daughter’, a lady whose embrace was definitely not sought after! One of the earliest versions was an open, rectangular frame of oak on four legs, over 6 feet long, standing about 3 feet above the ground.

The prisoner was laid on the floor beneath it, on their back, and his wrists and ankles were attached by ropes to the axle, or windlass, at each end of the frame. Again, when the windlasses were turned by levers operated by four Yeoman Warders under the command of the rackmaster, the dreaded stretching would start. But the English model was infinitely more painful than that of the Romans, because the victim was at floor level and would have to be hoisted to the level of the rack frame by the ropes, the victim’s own body-weight exacerbating the agony as he was slowly raised, every inch threatening to dislocate his joints.

The racking would need to be halted at intervals for the necessary questioning to take place and so, in order to reduce the strain on the warders who would otherwise have to brace themselves against the levers they operated, ratchets were incorporated in the windlasses, their grim, relentless clicking noise adding to the victim’s horror and torment.

The addition of a ratchet arrangement later allowed the number of operators to be reduced to two, one at each end, and with the passage of time this model of rack was superseded by a type having a central wooden roller with a ratchet at each end of it so that only one man was needed to operate it.

In Tudor times racking was usually applied after the victim had been adjudged guilty, as a means of tidying up the details of the treasonable conspiracy by ascertaining the names of his, or her, fellow conspirators, together with places and dates of meetings, and other aspects of the plot. The fact that the victim might die while being stretched simply meant, in the eyes of law, that the death sentence had been carried out, albeit by means other than the prescribed hanging or quartering.

The use of the rack ended in 1628, when it was declared illegal by a royal commission, although isolated cases still occurred for a further 12 years. The commission was set up as a result of the trial of a murderer, John Felton, who stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth. Felton was arrested and in the Tower was interrogated by the Earl of Dorset to give the names of his accomplices. When threatened with the rack, he made the one statement that saved scores of subsequent prisoners ever having to endure such agony again, for he simply said: ‘If I be put on the rack, I will accuse you, my Lord Dorset, and none but yourself.’

Aghast at the threat, and doubtless in fear of his own skin should that happen, Dorset referred the matter to Charles I, who then set up the commission. Its decision was that ‘Felton ought not by the law to be tortured by the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our law.’

Felton’s moment of triumph soon faded, however, for despite his moral victory he was hanged on 29 November 1628. His body was suspended in chains at Portsmouth, where the diarist Evelyn saw it and commented: ‘His dead body hangs there high; I hear it creak in the wind.’

Hardly a monument to the man who was responsible for having the rack struck off the judicial inventory, though ironically the names of the man he murdered were given to London streets in the area once owned by his family: George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street and Buckingham Street; and, yes, there once was an ‘Of Alley’!

Not to be left behind their English neighbours, Ireland had a rack, though there are no reports of its use ever having resulted in deaths. Which is more than can be said for the ones used in the Spanish Inquisition. Varying types of
escalero
, as it was called, were employed by the
Familiares
, the lay officers attached to the Holy Office, one being similar in most respects to the English version but with additional constraints: while the victim was being stretched, cords which had been wound three times around each of his arms and legs were tightened by means of a stick, tourniquet-fashion, cutting the flesh to the bone.

In another type of rack, used in the 1740s, the victim was held immovable by an iron collar about his neck, iron rings round his ankles similarly securing him. No stretching was involved; instead, two ropes the size of a man’s little finger were wound around each arm and leg, passing through holes made in the rack frame, and the executioners drew them tight, restricting the blood supply and causing grievous wounds.

John Marchant, in his book
The History of the Inquisition
, recorded the tragic case of Jane Bohorquia, who was arrested when her sister Mary, under torture, had implicated her by confessing that both had discussed their religious doubts.

When Jane was first imprisoned, she was about six months pregnant and so was not too harshly treated. However, eight days after her child had been born, it was taken away from her, and a week later she was subjected to the usual prison ill-treatment. As recorded:

‘This young creature was carried out to torture and, on being returned from it into jail, she was so shaken, and had all her limbs so miserably disjointed on the rack, that when she lay on her bed of rushes, it rather increased her misery than gave her rest, so that she could not turn without pain.

She had scarcely began to recover from her torture, when she was carried back to the same exercise, and was tortured with such diabolic cruelty on the rack, that the ropes pierced and cut into the very bones of her arms, thighs and legs, and in this manner she was brought back into prison, just ready to expire, the blood immediately running out of her mouth in great plenty. Undoubtedly they had burst her bowels, insomuch that the eighth day after her torture, she died.’